Minutes of the June 13, 2017 meeting were read and approved with correction, on a motion by KD5KBU-Jim and seconded by WA5ROE-Bob.

Treasurer’s Report by Angie-N5MVV gave an end of month balance of $3551.81. Report was approved by a motion by KE5OG-Bill and seconded by WA5ROE-Bob.

Old Business –
The committtee assigned to purge the storage shed will find a Saturday in September to finalize the removal of all articles from the shed. The next rental payment is due in December!

Repeater Report – 146.82/ Christmas Mountain is DOWN, likely a power issue possibly a Charge Controller failure due to lightning strike. No batteries installed as yet!

147.12/Cibolo Creek will have a remote set-up function installed, sometime this fall after other more pressing issues are settled!

146.92/Glass Mountain has possible issues with the West Texas Connection link and as a result has low output and possible antenna issues. These issues will be addressed AFTER Christmas Mountain issues and before Cibolo Creek needs!

No Calling Tree updates are available from Fort Davis yet! Per KD5KBU-JIM.

Allen-N5NYM advised us to check Newsletter and club website for possible sale items.

Field Day report from Bob-WA5ROE: we took in $674.00 in fees and donations for the Field Day food plan. Bob spent $485.91 of that for the food items, leaving a total of $208.09 surplus, which was added to our treasury!

KE5OG-Bill reported that our performance wasn’t “up-to-par” from previous events due to “Mother Murphy” causing SSB antenna issues shortly after the start of the event (rain the previous evening got into the coax and shorted it our for us). Also, the bands were in “horrible” condition on Saturday but were much better on Sunday.

WE made a total of 1222 CW contacts, 5 digital contacts, 903 SSB contacts, acrued 1180 bonus points, AND OVER 100 CONTACTS on the GOTA station (the most in many years)!
OUR GRAND TOTAL SCORE IS 7,894 POINTS!
We missed out on 200 points by not having an Elected Official or Law Enforcement attend our event (previous commitments were not fulfilled for the folks).

Bill-KE5OG reported that Midland lost a couple of their better operators when a husband/wife team moved out of the area, AND their GOTA station didn’t do very well!

Bill-W5WSA asked what was needed for next years event? Bill-KE5OG said, more CW ops, and more GOTA ops. were both needed.

Stephen-K5WCP asked about our problems with Field Day, and Bill-KE5OG stated that the bands were “stinko” on Saturday and 15/10 meter bands never opened, making the 20 meter band “EXTREMELY” crowded.

New Business-
Allen-N5NYM asked for ideas from the members for future programs for presentation at upcoming meetings.

Jim-KD5KBU announced that the August meeting “could” be held at McDonald Observatory as the HET is up and running on a nightly basis although the Spectrograph units are still being worked on. The meeting WILL be August 8, 2017 and meeting in the parking lot of the HET at 7:30PM.

Bob-WA5ROE reported that the “group” took a Field Day impromptu vote to put a decent radio into the van. Bob bought a Kenwood TM-281A radio and got it installed. The radio cost the club $132.95. Bill-KE5OG made a motion to reinburse Bob for the radio cost and JiM-KD5KBU seconded the motion.

Program for the evening- Allen-N5NYM did an intro to a Magnetic Loop Antenna he is building for himself and one for his son in Tucson who lives in an “Antenna Restricted” community.
The Loop Antenna is small in size (about 3 foot Octagional) and therefore can’t be seen from the street by the “Antenna Police”! Allen is building the antenna to accommodate a 100 watt transmitter (or more) and really high voltages appear on the antenna, saturating the tuning ability of the unit.

Allen is currently working on a controller box that reads the frequency from the transmitter and tunes the antenna with Stepper motors (with gear boxes due this week)! This should make the antenna tuneable across the entire CW and SSB portion of the 20 and 40 meter bands!

Meeting Adjourned at 8:37 PM.

Chuck Dobbins – KA5PVB
Acting Secretary for this meeting
filling in for Bill-W5NPR